Seth Meyers’ route to SNL ran through Amsterdam improv
A Boom Chicago sketch with Jill Benjamin became the show that put Seth Meyers in front of an SNL recruiter.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
Seth Meyers’ SNL Amsterdam story begins at Boom Chicago, the American improv theater where he spent two years after college. The Amsterdam work led to a stage partnership with Jill Benjamin, a two-person show in the U.S. and, eventually, a recruiter in the audience for Saturday Night Live.
CBS News revisited that path in a 60 Minutes Overtime video published Feb. 1, 2026, built around a Boom Chicago reunion. The career milestones themselves date to the late 1990s and 2001.
How did Seth Meyers get from Amsterdam to SNL?
Meyers moved to Amsterdam after college to work at Boom Chicago, he told NPR in 2024. He described the stint as two years. In a Vanity Fair travel guide, he said Amsterdam was his home in 1997 and 1998.
Benjamin joined the troupe in 1998, during Meyers’ second year there, CBS reported. In rehearsals, Meyers came up with a sketch called Bar Pickup, built around performers gathering details from audience members and weaving them into the scene.
The format demanded that the pair remember what they had heard while continuing to improvise. Meyers described it to CBS correspondent Jon Wertheim as part memory exercise and part improv exercise.
After trying the sketch with several partners, Meyers and Benjamin were paired together. Benjamin told CBS that their onstage connection made the collaboration work, while Meyers said they tried to surprise each other during performances.
From one sketch to a two-person show
While they were at Boom Chicago, Meyers and Benjamin decided to turn Bar Pickup into a full two-person production and bring it to the United States, according to CBS. The result was Pick-ups and Hiccups.
The show debuted in Chicago, then played in Edinburgh, London and Singapore, CBS reported. Its most consequential performance, for Meyers, came at the Chicago Improv Festival, where an SNL recruiter attended.
Meyers got the job and began at Saturday Night Live in 2001, CBS said. The chain was clear in his account: Amsterdam gave the performers a working partnership and their audience-driven act gave him the show that was seen by the recruiter.
What did Boom Chicago mean to Meyers?
Meyers told CBS that the troupe gave him a “road map” to his break at SNL. He said the group’s drive to be funny nightly initially overshadowed another lesson: it was showing its performers ways to do other work, too.
He also credited Benjamin with preserving the momentum when they returned from Amsterdam. At the reunion, the two performed Bar Pickup again, revisiting the audience-led format behind the collaboration that set the rest of the route in motion.
This story draws on original reporting from CBS News.